REPRESENTING REALITY
An interesting way of looking at the doctorate, in a way I hadn’t looked at it before, is how the process is a fashioning and presenting of reality. My mathematical background tends to process everything as ‘facts’ and ‘black and white’ and ‘objective’ but the more I read the more I realize that there is no reality and everything is subjective and influenced by the viewer’s background, assumed knowledge, prejudices, interpretations.
Some interesting quotes from Kapitzke (1998):
“the research trajectory itself was characterized by a high degree of ongoing change in theoretical, methodological, and political conceptualization”
“Problematise hidden assumptions of my role as researcher”
“the scales fell from my eyes as I came to see the insurmountable political position I had assumed in the research process”
“poststructural insights … prompted the realization that as an ethnographer I was sensitive to the cultural convention of my institution and practice as an academic researcher and writer… I was, in effect, oblivious to the theoretical, epistemological, and political implications of what I was doing to myself and my community.”
Originally the researcher in this article approached the data collection as ‘fact’ collection but finally realized all data is coloured by background, beliefs, societies and “that as text, data was also discourse” . The text being produced as neither objective nor value- neutral but bound up in the “interests, values, purposes, and ideologies of both my subjects, my supervisor and myself. Subjects’ testimonials were not real or raw social phenomena. They were discourse: mediated descriptions and reflections particular to a specific cultural, historical and geographic context”.
“A further implication was that, as there was apparently no universal truth in text, I had to wrestle with the notion of the fiction of factual representation and of ethnographic fiction.”
All very interesting stuff to someone who does tend to take a black and white view of the world. Another interesting point raised was that what you are excluding is as important and telling as what you are including and concluding.
From the other side of my studies, the Taronga Zoo course, we heard an interesting story the other day about the gorillas. Apparently the gorillas are real big softies. They are petrified of the little turtles in the moats and will run screaming if they see them. The keeper said she once saw a duck sitting with about 10 little babies under it in the gorilla enclosure, little heads peeping out from mum. The massive silverback crept up behind the duck and then smack, whacked its hand down on the ground behind the duck then ran away – the duck and ducklings of course had a heart attack and scattered to the 4 winds. She was convinced the gorilla found the whole thing hilarious.
Kapitzke, K (1998) Narrative on a Doctoral Narrative: Reflections on postgraduate study and pedagogy, Australian Educational Researcher, Vol 25, No 2, pp 95-111.